


Time and Flex Tape

by StarFlatinum



Series: Time Again [2]
Category: Bleach, Doctor Who, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, no beta we die like meguca
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarFlatinum/pseuds/StarFlatinum
Summary: Omake chapters, outtakes, and random bits and bobs that didn’t end up inStitches in Time.  These will bear no story relevance whatsoever.
Relationships: Akemi Homura & Sakura Kyouko, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Urahara Kisuke & The Doctor
Series: Time Again [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699813
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	1. Important Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh, this is based on actual conversations. There’s no plot to be had here; instead, we get what passes for normal talk in my household. I am very sorry.
> 
> This was originally an omake for the end of [Chapter 5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23590444/chapters/56638807) of _Stitches in Time_ because the chapter seemed a bit short.

“So~” Urahara practically sang, and Homura stopped fiddling with the console to watch him warily. That tone invariably preceded something either insanely terrifying or utterly stupid, and she was going to be prepared in case this time it was the former. Urahara fluttered his accursed fan in front of his mouth as he regarded the Doctor, whose carefree posture and expression implied incredible acting skills, because he couldn’t possibly be so naïve as to remain genuinely unconcerned. Not after the earlier verbal sparring.

Since the fan was angled between Urahara’s face and the Doctor’s, Homura could see the crooked grin begin to form as Urahara continued, “I have an English question for you.”

The Doctor looked politely baffled. “Why?”

“I’d like to test your translation systems,” Urahara explained. Watching his grin spread, Homura began to lean toward the _stupid_ option and returned to adjusting the temporal trim, but she kept listening. When Urahara was involved, it was best to avoid letting one’s guard down.

“Ah! A noble cause,” the Doctor declared. “Ask away, then.”

“The noun form of ‘strong’ is ‘strength’ and the noun for ‘long’ is ‘length’,” Urahara observed, his entirely serious tone a jarring contrast to whatever expression now occupied his face — it was far too unnerving to be called a grin by this point. “So why isn’t the noun form of ‘wrong’ ‘wrength’?”

Homura blinked at the implications of _anything_ translating to or from what she had just heard. The Doctor's mouth opened and closed a few times in succession, as though it had been possessed by an asphyxiating trout. For several seconds, only the hum of TARDIS machinery filled the air.

“… ‘strong’ comes from the Proto-Germanic ‘strangaz’, which also gave rise to the Norse ‘strangr’, and ‘long’ comes from the Proto-Germanic prefix ‘langa-’, which also produced the Norse ‘langr’,” the Doctor eventually supplied. “On the other hand, ‘wrong’ comes from the Proto-Germanic ‘wrang-’, which reached English _through_ the Norse ‘vrangr’. It lost the prepackaged noun formation on the way, and Old English had to make do.”

“You’re making that up,” Kyōko accused from a few meters to Homura’s left. Homura would not admit she was startled, though she had thought Kyōko was napping.

“Possibly,” said the Doctor, “but you have to admit it sounds convincing.” He waved a hand as if to dismiss the notion of correctness entirely.

Kyōko snorted and turned to Homura, who had by now concluded that Kyōko was more worthy of her attention than the two grown men across the room who were gradually descending into gibberish.

“God was drunk when he made _them_ ," Kyōko began with a gesture of her chin. “I’m probably cursed or something, and you’re your own special fustercluck.” It took a great deal of willpower for Homura to keep her eyes from rolling because of _fustercluck_ (was the translation circuit glitching?); she wanted to know where this was going.

Kyōko took a deep breath and solemnly pronounced her verdict over the current TARDIS crew: “We’re all going to die horribly.”

Homura’s eyes would be restrained no longer. They rolled with such intensity that she briefly wondered whether they were trying to escape her face, a concern which Kyōko shared wholeheartedly if her own expression gave any indication. Homura headed off any inquiries after her health with a raised hand.

“Let me know when they finish…” Homura trailed off, absently pulling a lever as she watched the Doctor perform some sort of ninja sign language while Urahara took notes. “… that. As soon as they finish whatever that is.”

“Why?”

“I had questions about the timestream, but I refuse to have any part in that, not even to put an end to it.”

“Sure, what the hell. Not like we're on a time crunch or anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is my personal headcanon that the Doctor has watched Naruto from beginning to end at least once, and I’ve had a debate about whether the TARDIS translation circuit works on sign language. Testing it on the ninja hand signs was inevitable.


	2. Fourth Wall (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I try to write something serious, it turns into a discussion of the limitations of some work or another by Edsger Dijkstra. No, I have no idea why. So instead of rewriting one sentence for hours on end, I produced a little chunk of meta-nonsense for you.
> 
> Or maybe this actually happened, but that way lies madness so I’ll swear it’s all a product of my imagination. Actually, is there a difference?

The magical girls of High Spirits, plus Madoka and Sayaka, found themselves seated about a round white table in a vast emptiness. Nagisa panicked slightly before Mami pulled her into her lap. Kyōko warily surveyed her surroundings, not that there was much to survey. Yuzu immediately took notice of an assortment of baked goods that occupied the tabletop; Karin took more interest in the surface of the nothingness beneath her crossed legs, which was much firmer than one would expect nothing to be. Madoka glanced from face to face, uncomprehending.

Homura locked eyes with Sayaka, who appeared to be the only person who was not extremely confused. The latter raised a hand sheepishly to the back of her head.

“I uh, I have an announcement,” Sayaka declared. She then proceeded to say nothing.

“Could have fooled me,” Kyōko remarked after a good while.

“Shut up.” Sayaka took a deep breath. “So I may have, um, accidentally leaned too hard on the fourth wall.”

Karin’s head snapped up from her inspection of the floor of nothing. “What.”

“I talked to the author,” Sayaka continued, “and apparently we’re in a fanfiction.”

Everyone stared at Sayaka, except for Mami, who was cutting a slice of the cake in front of her for Nagisa. It looked very much like one of Mami’s cakes.

Nagisa tilted her head. “What’s a fanfiction?”

Sayaka leaned back a bit, having clearly not expected to need to explain that part. “You know how sometimes you watch, like, a really good anime and start thinking about other ways things could have gone, or what goes on in the characters’ heads, or stuff that might have happened but didn't get shown?” She paused, and Nagisa nodded. “Well, a fanfiction is when somebody doesn’t just think about those things, they write a story about them.”

The littlest magical girl asked something nobody else at the table dared to. “So we’re… characters? From an anime?”

“Uh, basically.” Sayaka scratched her head. “How do I explain this… so there’s this anime, what’s it called, something abbreviated ‘PMMM’ I think. That’s where we’re from originally. Somebody wrote a fanfiction of that, with us in it, and then someone _else_ wrote a fanfiction of _that_. That’s where we are.”

“I could believe that,” Kyōko muttered.

Aside from Kyōko, the expressions around the table ran the gamut from bafflement to utter disbelief. But Homura had no better explanation for their sudden presence at a table of sweets in a void than what Sayaka had implied, which was that she’d put a hole in the boundary between reality and fiction. And discovered that she’d come from the fiction side.

Yes, it was a bit much to take in, but it had some potentially important implications. “Please try to remember what the abbreviation stands for. We may be able to gain useful information from the source material, especially since you say you have already established contact with the other side.”

“The author said no spoilers,” Sayaka noted, but her face pinched in concentration.

Yuzu’s head swivelled from side to side, between Homura and Sayaka, before settling on the former. “You believe her?” She turned back to Sayaka. “I mean, I don’t want to doubt you, but it’s just…”

“Hard to swallow,” Karin completed.

“I know, right?” Sayaka laughed, but there was little humour in it. “Right, the title was ‘Pillar Man Madoka Magica’ or something like that.”

“ _Now_ I don’t believe you,” Kyōko scoffed.

Madoka blinked slowly. “Why is my name in it?”

“You must be the main character,” Homura answered without hesitation.

Yuzu put a finger to her chin. “I would have thought that would be Onii-chan,” she pondered. “No offense!”

“You’re right, though,” Karin said thoughtfully. “He has protagonist power for days.”

“Actually, you guys are from a different show,” Sayaka interjected.

Karin asked, half jokingly, “What’s it called, something something Ichigo Magica?”

“No, I remember this one. It’s ‘Bleach’.”

Karin puffed up like an angry bird and did an excellent impression of her brother’s scowl. “It’s not bleached, it’s natural!”

“What?” Sayaka was obviously as lost as everyone else.

“Oh, everyone says Onii-chan’s hair is bleached,” Yuzu explained.

Karin snorted. “Nobody believes him when he says he gets it from Mom. Everybody gives him grief for it, but especially teachers and delinquents.”

“Why?” Madoka asked.

“Because his hair is orange,” Karin stated like it was obvious.

Kyōko looked meaningfully at the assortment of hair colours present at the table, lingering on Mami’s before she fingered her own. “Right,” she drawled. An awkward silence followed.

Ultimately, Mami cut the tension with a topic change. “This cake tastes a lot like mine,” she remarked.

“Then you’re a really good baker,” Nagisa decided.

Sayaka brightened. “Oh yeah, the author copied some of your and Yuzu’s baking.”

“Speaking of which, why are we here?” Kyōko asked. “And where the hell is ‘here’ anyway?”

“I guess I was thinking about all of you when I fell through the fourth wall. I sort of fell into the author’s mind, which he cleared out to make me comfortable. You got dragged in when he did that.”

Kyōko knocked on the nonexistent ground; it produced no noise. “So it’s not usually this empty? Couldn’t we get an actual floor?”

“He’s probably pretty busy, you know, fixing the fourth wall. We’re stuck here until he does, so he’s got to focus on that.”

“So,” interjected Karin, “since you were here first, you got to see what this place usually looks like? What’s it like in the mind of a guy who watches magical girl anime?”

“Don’t be rude,” Yuzu insisted. “We’re guests in his head.”

Karin huffed. “I never asked to be here, and I don’t think you did either. After all the crap he’s put us through, why do we need to play nice with him?”

“Hear, hear!” Kyōko called out. Mami rested her face in her hands.

As the others grew louder and more heated, Homura had a bit of an epiphany. “If I am a fictional character,” she mused aloud, “then my ordeals have, in fact, been mandated by a higher power.”

Madoka peered at her, concerned. “Homura? What are you talking about?”

She had to finish the thought. “Does this mean… that I was made to suffer?”

Aghast, Madoka pulled Homura into a hug. “No, of course you’re not—”

“I have never felt so vindicated in my life.”

“—what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued…


End file.
